New York Yankees

Welcome to a long day/night of baseball. Hiroki Kuroda will start for the Yankees in the opener of the doubleheader against the Dodgers and Phil Hughes will take the night shift. Kuroda is 7-2 with a 2.18 ERA in his 12 day starts with the Yankees these two seasons, tied for the top winning percentage in the AL (.778). “A lot of times when you have a little age on you, you prefer the first game instead of waiting around all day,” Joe Girardi said. “Hughesie seems to like to pitch a little better at night. So it actually works out pretty well.” Kuroda went 7-12 with a 3.79 ERA in 26 games, including 25 starts, working on the day side for the Dodgers. And now he gets to go against his old team. “What might help is this situation is a lot of the guys that are playing today weren’t teammates of his,” Girardi said. “They have a lot of new faces there.” Girardi said he hadn’t spoken to Brian Cashman as yet about the Yankees’ plan for the outfielder they reportedly have acquired from the Astros, Fernando Martinez, the former Mets prospect who got hurt often and didn’t pan out. The Yankees do need outfield depth at Triple-A. The tentative plan for new call-up Zoilo Almonte is to give the 24-year-old switch-hitting outfielder a start in the second game and probably one against a righty in the coming Tampa Bay series. He was batting .297 with 12 doubles, six homers and 36 RBI with Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. He was batting .354 in 16 games this month, including 10 for 17 in his last four games. Almonte played all three outfield positions for the RailRiders. “We really believe this kid is going to hit,” Girardi said. “At times, we really saw it in spring training. He struggled a little bit in spring training. Maybe it was the excitement of trying to make a team. But he has seemed to swing the bat pretty well down there, especially left-handed. He’s a guy that can play either left or right, which is helpful in this situation.” Photo by The Associated Press. The post Yankees pregame: Kuroda takes the day shift appeared first on The LoHud Yankees Blog.

Our man Hiroki goes in the matinee. 1. Gardner CF 2. Nix SS 3. Cano 2B 4. Wells LF 5. Neal DH 6. Suzuki RF 7. Adams 3B 8. Overbay 1B 9. Stewart C Never mind the goldbrickers: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Via K. Levine-Flandrup: The Yankees have officially signed second round pick Gosuke Katoh to an $845,700 signing bonus, full slot value for the 66th overall pick. He has already passed his physical. Katoh, 18, is a high school second baseman out of San Diego. The rail thin speedy slap hitter was considered more of a fourth or fifth round talent heading into the draft, but the Yankees have a tendency to go against the consensus and reach for players they really like in the early rounds. I thought Katoh would sign for something below slot, but apparently not. Keep tabs on the team’s draft pool with our 2013 Draft Pool page. Post from: River Ave. Blues A New York Yankees blog2013 Draft: Yankees sign second rounder Gosuke Katoh

I want to revisit an aspect of last week's post about finding an ace pitcher in the draft. Specifically, how do you statistically define an ace, and how often have the Yankees had one in their rotation? I think an ace has three qualities. First is durability - knowing that he's going to take the ball each time through the rotation. If your number 1 starter took the ball every fifth game all season, he'd make 33 starts, but I'll set the minimum number of starts to 30 to mitigate the change from the 154 to 162 game schedule and changes in pitcher use. Second is the ability to go deep into games, and give the team innings. I thought about using 220 IP as the benchmark for an ace, but I'll set the minimum number of IP to 200. Third is the quality of the innings. I'll use ERA+, since it adjusts for era and ballpark, and set the minimum ERA+ at 120. For reference, Whitey Ford's 3.04 ERA in 1959 was a 119 ERA+, Ron Guidry's 3.67 ERA in 1987 was a 121 ERA+, David Cone's 3.82 ERA in 1995 was a 122 ERA+, Chien-Ming Wang's 3.70 ERA in 2007 was a 122 ERA+ and CC Sabathia's 3.38 ERA in 2012 was a 123 ERA+. For an ace season, I don't think 30 starts, 200 IP, and a 120 ERA+ are unreasonable standards or expectations. I'll also limit this discussion to the modern, post-World War II era. So how many Yankee pitchers have turned in an ace quality season since 1946? Here are all of them, courtesy of Baseball-Reference's play index: At first glance, 28 pitchers is a lot more than I expected. However, only 10 of them had more than one ace season. Ford is the leader with six. Sabathia, Mike Mussina, Guidry, Mel Stottlemyre and Eddie Lopat tie for second with three ace seasons. Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Fritz Peterson and Jim Bouton each have two ace seasons. I'm really surprised that the Yankees have only had six pitchers put up three or more ace-quality seasons in the last 66 years. If I drop the 30 start requirement and just worry about 200 IP of 120 ERA+, the list doesn't change that much. Ford is still on top, but now with eight ace seasons. Sabathia and Guidry each add one ace season to tie for second with four (in Sabathia's case, all four of his seasons with the Yankees). Allie Reynolds pops up with two ace seasons, and a couple others show up with a single ace season. In either case, the names aren't a surprise, but the number of seasons is lower than what I expected. Why is that? Ford lost two full years to the Army during the Korean War immediately following 112 great innings as a rookie. In his first 12 seasons after his return, 1953-64 (ages 24-35), his average season was an ace season - 31 starts, 225 IP, and a 134 ERA+. He pitched fewer than 200 innings twice, and had three seasons with an ERA+ worse than 120 (but never worse than 115). Guidry averaged an ace season for his nine-year prime from 1977-85 (ages 26-34) - 32 games, 29 starts, 222 IP and a 123 ERA+. The strike limited him to 127 IP in 1981, he had good but not great seasons in 1980 and 1983, was closer to mediocre 1982 (104 ERA+), and pretty bad in 1984 (84 ERA+). He didn't stick with the Yankees until he was 26, and after the 1985 season injuries really took their toll. Lopat averaged an ace season over his first six years with the Yankees - 29 games, 28 starts, 207 IP and a 127 ERA+. However, his 3.65 ERA was a 112 ERA+ in the first season, and injuries limited him to 149 and 178 IP in the last two. Clemens had seasons of 187 IP (1999) and 180 IP (2002), with a mediocre 102 ERA+ both times. In 2003 he had a good but not great 113 ERA+ in 211 innings. His five seasons with the Yankees was easily the worst stretch of his career, which really speaks to how great he was. Jimmy Key had an ace season in 1993, was well on his way to another when the strike hit in 1994 and made only five starts in 1995. He was only okay when he came back in 1996, and put up one last ace season with Baltimore in 1997. He had three others with Toronto.

More from John Lardner. Originally published in 1949 in the New Yorker and reprinted here with permission of Susan Lardner. “The Battling Siki” By John Lardner Hell’s Kitchen, the region west of Eighth Avenue around the Forties, won its name many years ago and continued to deserve it until about the time the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed. Things are different there now. So its residents will tell you, and so you can see for yourself if, having known the neighborhood a little during Prohibition, you visit it even briefly today. Once it was carpeted, for nearly all its length and breadth, with low, swarthy brick tenement houses containing a warren of flats, speak-easies, six-table cellar “cabarets,” hole-in-the-wall stores and restaurants, back-room stills, and “social clubs,” where a portion of the manhood of the district stored guns and ammunition and planned stick-ups and highjackings. Right along the equator of Hell’s Kitchen ran the Ninth Avenue “L” tracks, throwing a grim, significant shadow by day and night. Other parts of town had clip joints, or “buckets of blood,” scattered through them, but the Kitchen, as a detective friend of mine used to say, was one big bucket of blood. Nowadays the Kitchen is a bit more shiny and much more respectable. Neon lights and modern shops and garages have pushed their way into it. The McGraw-Hill Building has gouged out half of what was considered one of the hottest blocks in Hell’s Kitchen in the nineteen twenties—the block bounded by Eighth and Ninth Avenues and Forty-first and Forty-second streets. The Lincoln Tunnel approaches have formed an asphalt plaza west of Ninth Avenue. The sleek New Jersey buses and automobiles bound for and away from the West Side Highway plow across the old badlands in steady procession. The retail liquor traffic thereabouts has become negligible; the city’s center of gravity of crime has shifted elsewhere, perhaps to Brooklyn. Broadly speaking, Hell’s Kitchen is not a frontier community any more but a sort of vehicular gateway to the heart of Manhattan. However, if you want to conjure up the atmosphere of earlier times, you can still find islands of squat tenement houses here and there to help you, many of them boarded up and condemned, and the empty shells of many basement grogshops. In the unlikely event that you want to visit the scene of the murder, twenty-four years ago, of a man called Battling Siki, which is what I did one day recently for no useful reason, you will come across a few surviving landmarks. You can pace off distances in the same gutter and seamy street—Forty-first—down which Siki crawled forty feet west toward Ninth Avenue, with two bullets in his body, before he collapsed and died. He crawled in the direction of the “L,” the cave of shadows that no longer is there. His killer threw away the gun in front of a grimy old house that is now gone; the McGraw-Hill Building is there instead. These changes make the setting less sinister than it used to be, but even now there’s plenty to show that it was a drab and lonesome place to die. Siki who held the light-heavyweight boxing championship of the world for six months in 1922 and 1923, was born in Senegal, in French West Africa, in 1897 and was killed in Hell’s Kitchen twenty-eight years later, in 1925. He was the Kitchen’s most turbulent citizen in the short time he lived there. He was thought by neighbors who knew him to have an honest heart and a generous soul, but when he drank the newly cooked liquor of the parish, as he often did, the cab drivers, cops, bartenders, and hoodlums whom he chose, with impeccable lack of judgment, to knock around, found it hard to take him philosophically. Rear-line observers, on the other hand were usually able to be philosophical about Siki. During the three years of his life in which he received international publicity—the last thre

Food 52 shows us how to make a Galette.

Your browser does not support iframes. The Juice returns for season No. 6! It’s almost eligible for free-agency! Stop by daily for news from the action, along with great photos, stats, video highlights and more. Fans saw the future at Turner Field on Tuesday, and it looked pretty bright for the New York Mets. [Jeff Passan: Future is now for Mets thanks to imposing pitching duo ] Zack Wheeler made a successful major league debut in the second game of a doubleheader, throwing six scoreless innings, helping to secure a sweep against the Atlanta Braves in a 6-1 victory. Earlier, Matt Harvey took a no-hitter into the seventh, he struck out 13 and the Mets held on for a 4-3 win. In all, a fun glimpse into what might be , for a rebuilding franchise. ”I hope people saw this,” said manager Terry Collins, no doubt referring to New York’s long-suffering NL fans. ”Certainly they’re going to enjoy watching these two guys for a long time. They’re going to be around.” Wheeler, who came over from the Giants organization in the Carlos Beltran trade in 2011, certainly drank it all in. He went back to sign autographs for fans after the game while still wearing his full uniform. Wheeler allowed four hits and five walks while striking out seven. Anthony Recker broke a scoreless tie with a two-run home run against Paul Maholm in the seventh inning. The Mets improved to 27-40 overall, so GM Sandy Alderson is still perhaps another dozen additions away from turning the ship around completely. Even Harvey, who will be the team’s ace for years to come, has work to do covering first base . Slugger Lucas Duda, in training at that position, later took the blame for messing up Harvey’s no-hit bid on Jason Heyward’s slow tapper. But Harvey’s the one with the ball, noted Braves broadcaster Tom Glavine, and flipping it to the umpire will never result in an out. Unless you’re in a “Naked Gun” baseball scene. MORE SCORES Dodgers at Yankees, ppd. (rain): It was disappointing to have a washout for the Dodgers first trip to Yankee Stadium since the 1981 World Series, but at least we get a Hyun-Jin Ryu vs. Hiroki Kuroda matchup in the rescheduled doubleheader opener Wednesday afternoon. Far-eastern Asia baseball bragging rights hang in the balance! View full post on Yahoo! Sports – MLB – New York Yankees News

There is no difference between the lineup for the first game of today's doubleheader and the one Joe Girardi was going to run out last night: First game of today's doubleheader vs. the Dodgers pic.twitter.com/xuwmgycquP — Yankees PR Dept. (@YankeesPR) June 19, 2013 That is... quite the lineup. I expect that we'll probably see Zoilo Almonte's big-league debut in Game 2 to give one of the aged outfielders a rest, but that's just a guess. It's weird to see Vernon Wells hitting fourth. That being said, it doesn't really seem clear who else would go there since there's not much power in the lineup right now. (Aside: I will also say that though I like him, Thomas Neal hitting fourth is not much better than Steve Pearce hitting cleanup last year. Pass.) In yesterday's lineup post, PB member Terrekain proposed this possible lineup with a possibly insane/possibly brilliant spin: 1) Ichiro Suzuki [L] (LF) 2) Jayson Nix [R] (SS)3) Brett Gardner [L] (CF) 4) Robinson Cano [L] (2B) 5) Vernon Wells [R] (RF) 6) Thomas Neal [R] (DH) 7) Lyle Overbay [L] (1B) 8) Chris Stewart [R] (C) 9) David Adams [R] (3B) Gardner batting third? What the what? Here's his reasoning: Gardner is hitting for a lot more power, and I don’t mean simply homeruns. He’s second on the team in extra-base hits, four behind Cano. It’s one of the reasons he isn’t stealing as much... you can’t steal as many bases when you hit doubles, triples and home runs. Ichiro and Nix have plenty of speed in front of him so they should be able to make use of his extra-base hits and score.Even if Gardner only singles and walks, Ichiro and Nix are fast enough that they won’t clog the bases in front of him. Gardner’s development of power this season is wasted in the lead-off position…especially now that the Yankees are hurting for power with the loss of Tex and Youk and A-Rod and all the rest.He’s one of the Yankees’ best hitters right now; use him that way. The Yankees' offense right now is struggling so much that it might just be crazy enough to work, especially since Ichiro and Gardner have been hitting well the past week or so. Gardner would still be on base for Cano in this situation anyway. With DH Travis Hafner occasionally needing days off, why not give it a shot? It might inspire more confidence than Vernon Wells hitting cleanup anyway. There's not much else news to report this morning, but MLB.com Video recently uploaded some classic clips related to Yankees/Dodgers. Check 'em out: Lou Piniella walks off the Dodgers in Game 4 of the '78 World Series Don Mattingly's roaring ovation prior to his first playoff at-bat Yankees/Dodgers Old Timers' Day at Dodger Stadium Look back at the '78 World Series (may contain crazy plays by Graig Nettles at third base) Rivalry roundtable with Willie Randolph, Bob Watson, Steve Garvey, and Ron Cey Don't forget that broadcaster Vin Scullywill be taking over the Dodgers' Twitter account for Game 2 tonight. That's definitely worth checking out.

Saw this over at Hardball Talk–Josh Hamilton’s spectacular 0-5 performance last night. The Golden Sombrero is four strikes outs. So what’s three double plays and two strike outs? A full house. A full house of shit. But since it was a one-run game let’s call it the Platinum Shit House upon which all horrid nights shall now be based. I mean, goddamn. [Photo Credit: Jae C. Hong/AP]

1. Gardner CF 2. Nix SS 3. Cano 2B 4. Wells LF 5. Neal DH 6. Suzuki RF 7. Adams 3B 8. Overbay 1B 9. Stewart C Kuroda P The post Yankees lineup appeared first on The LoHud Yankees Blog.